As Derry's bonfire preparations unfold, local sentiments reveal a mix of celebration and controversy, highlighting the area's complex political landscape.
London, United Kingdom Aug 17, 2026 ALN: On any other Saturday, Lecky Road carries traffic through the Bogside area of Derry, but this weekend it featured an army of teenagers building a bonfire that some would wish to see stopped.
On the other side of Meenan Square, Phil Coulter’s The Town I Loved So Well could be heard over the speakers before a local singer serenaded shoppers at a nearby family fun day with a rousing rendition of the Wolfe Tones’ We’re On The One Road.
Street traders along the road sold everything from coffee and cake to tricolours and novelty 1916 t-shirts.
In one corner, two women were doing a roaring trade in homemade crafts, while another stall featured traditional Irish ornaments.
Residents chatted as children ran between the stalls, and the atmosphere was that of a village fete – a long way from the “anti-community” label so often attached to August 15 republican bonfires.
Bemused tourists stopped to photograph the bonfire alongside their usual snaps at Free Derry Corner.
Between the fun day on one side and the fire on the other sits Meenan Square, the derelict site where the Bogside’s bonfire previously burned and is now fenced off for an £11 million redevelopment.
This year’s bonfire was still being built on Saturday afternoon, as young men aged in their early to mid-teens, masked to hide their faces, passed pallets to the top of the impromptu structure, which locals say sprang up in protest against the seizure of up to 500 pallets by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) from under the Lecky Road flyover early on Wednesday morning.
It is understood that a site away from road users and housing had been discussed by the builders ahead of the raid.
The DfI said on Sunday that it was not aware of any proposed or alternative bonfire site, while Derry and Strabane District Council had yet to reply to a request for comment from the Irish News at the time of publication.
Nearby, a small boy pointed up in admiration at an older lad hauling pallets to the summit.
The August 15 bonfire is usually lit in the Bogside on the date of the Catholic Feast of the Assumption, to mark the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. This year, it was also lit as a protest.
Last Wednesday morning, in the dawn operation overseen by the PSNI, DfI contractors loaded the pallets destined for the bonfire which were being stored under the Lecky Road flyover into lorries.
The department, whose minister is Sinn Féin MLA Liz Kimmins, said the “illegal storage” of the pallets posed a “significant fire safety risk” because of gas mains beneath the tarmac.
Locals were unconvinced by the explanation.
“Now they’re telling us there’s a gas main down there,” one resident said. “There were pallets stored in there for years.”
Within hours of the seizure, disorder had broken out.
By Saturday, the seized pallets had been replaced and there was a mood of excitement in the air.
“This is a celebration. It’s a family celebration. The 15th – it’s a holiday. That’s why these things happen in the first place,” one resident told The Irish News.
Again and again, residents returned to the same grievance: a site had been agreed, and then the lorries came anyway.
One Bogside man, standing in front of the pyre, put it bluntly: “Whoever sent them on, whoever got the contractors – instead of engaging with the young people and saying, look, what can we do here, they just tried to bite the hand of the youth.
“No matter what, there’s always going to be a bonfire in these republican areas. I don’t see it ever not happening. If they can all come together and get it in a safe location and it’s all done by level heads, I don’t see why not.”
Speaking on Wednesday following the seizure, First Minister Michelle O’Neill commended those who removed the pallets from the department-owned land.
A poster baring her face along with the words “Sinn Féin sellouts” appeared on the pyre on Saturday.
The following day, the First Minister described the bonfires as a “blight” and labelled the actions of the night before as the “very opposite of republicanism.”
“The burning of images and references to me in Derry last night are the very opposite of republicanism,” she said.
“Let me be very clear, I will not be deterred, distracted or intimidated. I will continue to call out sectarianism, anti-community activity and destruction wherever it comes from. These bonfires are a blight on our community.”
Among those at the family fun day, there was a mood that Stormont’s nationalist politicians are no longer in touch with the area where they once held much sway.
A large sign by Free Derry Corner read ‘Sovereignty not Stormont’.
There is warmer feeling towards local council candidates such as independent republican Gary Donnelly, who topped the poll locally last time round with 1,868 first-preference votes.
Beneath the politics sits something much simpler – the conviction that the area has been left behind.
“Derry has been a forgotten city, there’s no doubt about it,” one local said.
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